I have been developing websites for quite some time and I am not so good in designing websites? My Boss is refering me to take some lessons on it.
But I really want to stick to development rather than designing?
You don't need to be a designer. But I would highly recommend you understand the process and some of the techniques used. Having that knowledge will assist in both working with designers and providing better back ends.
I'd do the course, but make it clear to my boss that it's not what I want to do as a main job.
Answer yourself these questions:
What is your objective, the dream? developer or designer?
What are you best with?
Will I be able to justify with my design requirements?
It this common that a developer should be a designer too?
Will you be able to to concentrate on both, the ever changing trends and techs.
Having said that, I have seen such people having both skills but still they don't weigh equal in both parts.
Developer as well as designer:
Chris Coyier of css-tricks.com
Pekka
It depends on what you want to be in the future. Actually, designing and programming are two different skills. Obviously, for websites two things are both required. As a developer, if you have some basic knowledge about design, it would help you and also the designer to make the website much easier to maintain. But personally, I do not thinking you have to dive into design.
a good developer knows a lot about design, but dont have to be good at designing something.
i've seen to many developers building up a given design and making so much mistakes, because they don't see the little intricacies that are enormously important for a well designed website.
One particular design aspect I find many developers (good ones) are not necessarily extremely strong at is understanding of colors harmony. Even though it seems like easy thing to do, find the right combination of colors on a page, it is not always that easy. That course may be helpful in that regard.
I started of as a developer and then progressed into being a Developer/Designer.
You start to understand design aspects, UX aspects and the likes.
So i believe a good developer should also have a good understanding of design aspects as well
The bottom line is your boss thinks you'd benefit from a bit of immersion in design, and you probably will.
It doesn't sound like he wants you to become a designer, just get a feel for it. He's not asking for a career change.
There's always benefits in learning something new. And if your boss is backing you taking some time to do it got for it.
As a developer you should know something about usability and software ergonomics. You should know the basic structure of a website. And you should be able to implement a given design.
I think it is not the job of a developer to create a design.
Try to answer: "Why does your boss want you to improve skills in design? "
Your team is too expensive and boss is going to fire designer. He is wondering is it possible.
Your designer complains to boss that developers constantly ask him to refactor insignificant details interrupting from common tasks. So your boss wants to delegate small design decision to developers.
If it's so, I think nothing is a bad to improve design skills if your boss doesn't want you to convert to designer.
I also agree with all those people, who state: Developer and designer are two different roles.
Well, if developing is the field you are comfortable with, stick with it.
But learning is never bad. Try to gain knowledge first, after taking the classes, you can answer this question yourself
Wow, I'm actually in the exact opposite of your situation. I'm a designer just crossing the line of web development. But in my case, it was my own decision and it wasn't imposed by anyone.
It's always a plus if you have web development skills on top of design skills. I guess it holds true if you're a web developer and have design skills as well.
It never hurts to learn the basic, like others have mentioned, but keep in mind to stick on what you're good at and master it. Its better to be a master of something rather than being a jack of all trades. With so much competition out there, you really have to excel at your craft.
Learn both, but master one, I'd say. I personally see myself as a developer foremost, but I do know a thing or two about design - and, more specifically, implementing it (think CSS and the like).
However, I gratuitously admit that I am not good at making a design that looks good. A functional one, maybe, but not good. You could say something like that to your boss - that yes, you are capable of learning to design, however that you will never be as good as a real designer. Likewise, a designer learning to program will never be as good as a dedicated developer.
Related
I work in a small and young team of developers and we have problems that we are not sure how to solve.
On previous projects every developer have been working on tasks that were based on use cases. So, upon setting the system architecture, each team member worked on user interface and business logic of tasks assigned to him.
This kind of organization gave us the problems with UI. Each developer had his own logic about how UI should look like, where buttons should be, etc etc... and even if we've had one css designer a lot of refactoring had to be done in order to make web site to look compactly.
How do you deal with this issue?
Do you split tasks based on layer, not on whole use case?
Do you use some technical solution to achieve this or is it just written standard that every developer need to follow?
Thanks
Everyone has their own style and it would be difficult and a waste of time to define a standard that would get everyone to draw the UI in a consistent manner. Instead, elect your best UI designer to do what he does best and design the UI for the whole system. Funneling all UI changes through the designer would be difficult so just let your developers "mess it up" as they implement new use cases and just have your designer clean it up before the release. It shouldn't be hard for him/her to rearrange the existing forms and bring some consistency back to the UI.
I've found this 12 Standard Screen Patterns article very useful.
A solution might be to create sketches of all screens of your application, have them reviewed by an ergonomy-expert to correct the biggest mistakes, and, only then, give them to your developpers.
This way, they would know how the screens they are developping should look like -- there will still be a couple of differences in the end, but those should not be "big differences", and should be eaiser to fix.
And this would mean not each developper has to imagine what the perfect screen would look like : each one of those would be coherent with the others.
Adopt the tried and tested MVC system, let the view be decoupled from the business logic. Then ask a UI designer to produce sketches and work to that. UI's are something best done top-down from my experience. The user gets an overall view before being presented with all the details, defining and capturing this hierarchy makes good UI's. Coding of business logic is done as you mentioned on a use-case basis, mostly bottom-up and this is where the code falls out of sync with the UI.
Designate one person (preferably someone with graphic design experience, even if they're not really a programmer) and give them the authority to make cosmetic changes to all forms, pages and controls at any time, and have them be responsible for the overall look and feel of the application.
As far as metrics go, keep track of how much time this one person has to spend "fixing" each programmer's work, and make sure the programmers are aware of these numbers. The idea is to encourage them to make their stuff look like it should from the beginning, but also not to do weird things based on what they think stuff should look like. I've had to spend more time undoing my coworkers' bizarre design choices than anything else.
Don't be afraid to have outside sources review the design work of each programmer. It's very common for programmers to 1) produce horrible-looking UIs, and 2) believe the UIs look fantastic. You should do what the Army does with boot camp: break them down completely right from the start, so that you can build them back up again the right way.
Part of the problem with creating your own written standard is that while well meaning, there could be mistakes or better ways to do things than what's been standardized. For example, where I work, the standardized cancel button does nothing when you click on it (it's been wired to Reset).
Instead, I recommend choosing existing standards, such as The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines or Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines. Even if the standard is wrong, it's rarely profitable to deviate from widely established conventions.
Then pick up some good books for the developers, such as "Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design". Good user interface design is partially a matter of good taste, and while not every developer will be interested in the subject, it's in your best interest to help them improve.
Next, empower your QA team to file bugs when the interface for one product is inconsistent with another. The developer can then either standardize or justify the deviation if he has a reason. We do this; it works pretty well.
Lastly, go over your existing products and get a consensus on how their interfaces should be unified. Bring in (and keep) a usability expert if you can. I've seen good ones do amazing work.
There really is no clear solution for how to deal with UI problems. There are however several approaches one can take to combat the problem of having things become too complicated:
Use cases are usually cross disciplinary in nature, thus the responsibility to get a use case done should be split between the people who can implement it properly. Programmer and designer type of people need to cooperate.
Everyone in the team needs to keep in mind seperation of concerns, i.e. things that can be seperated must be kept that way preferably as early as possible. There are so many ways to do this: e.g. apply MVC pattern in your project (which is a very wide way to put it). Presentation and logic should be seperate so that changes in one layer should not affect the other.
Someone needs to be responsible for the overall UI design so it is consistent throughout the application. Preferably someone who is both a graphic designer and has some insight in usability. UI design is something that needs to be planned along with the use cases and revised constantly as development goes on. Consistent UI is very important and developers need to be on board on it.
Many applications are let down by the quality of the 'writing' in their user interfaces: typically, poor spelling, grammar, inconsistent tone, and worse yet, "humour" are the usual offenders.
Are there good resources that can help developers to write UI messages that give a professional and positive impression to your customers, even when your code's going to hell in a handcart?
Thanks, all — Some great resources here, so I will CW this question. I'm accepting Adam Sill's answer because it's the one that (as a developer of desktop apps) I found most pertinent.
Since XP, I've been a fan of the Windows UX Guidelines sections that cover how to properly structure text (how to ask questions, how to make assertions in dialogs, etc).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa974176.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa974175.aspx
Read The Elements of Style. Then re-read it.
Also, anytime you are working with a program or website make a conscious effort to notice how they choose to do their writing. Imitate those you like.
The resources found at Writing for the Web might be useful to you.
The best tool for this is called "primary education". Many developers seem to have missed this, and I don't know how to fix that problem.
Also, this may be a British thing, but I think you mean "humor" and "going to Hell in a handbasket". :)
This book has a lot of good advice:
GUI Bloopers 2.0
Short version:
Be consistent throughout your application or app suite. Don't call the same feature two different names, even if they're in different dialogs, etc. Develop a product lexicon that everyone references.
Use the same terms that people who use your software use (i.e. users don't refer to themselves as users).
Don't call two different things by the same name.
Put all of the messages displayed to the user in a central place (i.e. a resources file of some kind). This makes it easy to review all of the messages for spelling, tone, consistency, and whatever else you want to check.
Usability test your software to see if the messages make sense and people can use your software easily. If they can't, change the resources file and test it again.
I would suggest showing your UI to as many people as you can--preferably people who read a lot (Just because reading does wonders for your grammar and vocabulary).
Getting something out that people can examine, however, is awesome--even if it's just a demo of the GUI.
If you work at a company, get to know your QA and Tech Support people. They are usually really wonderful once they understand what you are trying to do--they will review your UI, give you input on text and usability as well as possibly new requirements nobody in engineering would come up with.
If you work on your own, try to find a potential customer or two to review your UI. Ask them to pay attention to the text...
The more eyes, the better. You might even ask your parents, wife or other family. What can it hurt?
Get your application's texts proofread by someone who does just that for a living. Then the UI walked through by someone who does usability for a living. Neither of these two people should have been involved in the development.
It's the only way to make sure.
I am looking for nice looking sites that are good in terms of look and feel as well as usability.
Someone had to say it: Stack Overflow!
Seriously - it may not be immediately beautiful to look at, but for what it is, and for its target audience and how they use it, it's a great example of both visual design and interaction design.
The layout, the use of colour, the sensible use of AJAX, the lack of fancy graphics, all give a good experience IMHO.
It's also a good example of how to incorporate advertising in an effective but unobtrusive way.
Google.
It gets out of the way as much as possible and lets you focus on doing what you came there to do.
I think this is question is much like Share good examples of Web-GUIs question that was post in the site sometime ago. probably it will help you.
Zen Garden - beauty but especially showing you what different things can be done with pure accessible HTML. So having Usability in mind as well.
I don't know what kind/segment of site you want. But I`ll mention one that is kind of site to create site that helped me to create fast and beautiful things.
www.snappages.com is a example of nice/easy/friendly/pretty/dummyFriendly/niceExamples/easyToCreatePrettyThings/easyToMaintain/etc...
I really think that is a 'must know place'
Cheers :)
I think gmail is an example of a very usable UI.
I've always found that other people's great web sites are more of an inspiration than a practical help. Every site has particular needs. For example, this site is good for what it does, but it really isn't a site I need to build; likewise for this one and this one.
I think it is valuable to develop a philosophy/aesthetic for this, or at least be conversant with those who think a lot about design and accessibility. Here are two sites with some serious discussion along these lines, along with some coding howto:
http://stopdesign.com/
http://www.456bereastreet.com/
But even these reflect my personal taste. There are people in my family who really like Club Penguin. And I hear some folks can tolerate MySpace.
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I've been making small scale projects for a while now. I haven't started a large project, yet, because I haven't come across anything which I needed and wasn't already accomplished by some other FOSS. Until now. I want to make a program which will allow users to interactively learn secondary languages (I'm kind of want to make it as close to Rosetta Stone as I can).
Right now I'm the only developer since I'm not sure if I'm biting of more than I can chew and don't want to waste any contributors time.
So far I've been planning how the project is going to work and setting up tools to make the project start smoothly and for it to be readily accessible for when other users are ready to contribute to it. I've set up a SourceForge account, a git repository, as well as a document which lists all the features and what the program is going to accomplish.
A basic break down is that the suite is going to be written in java, and the suite will have the ability to support many languages via their locale. The courses for learning the languages will be written in jython. Course-makers will have the ability to use pre-made jython courses to teach their course, or make their own original ones. I'm hoping this will allow for the software to teach copious languages via many mother tongues.
I'm also planning on having a repository of "released courses" which are ones which I (or people who better comprehend the language) think are top-notch courses. This will hopefully make the program seem more professional and secure to the users while allowing third party participation.
With this in mind:
Are there any fatal flaws or suggestions about my project you would like to make?
Is there anything I'm missing about making a big project in general?
Thank you for your time and effort,
Joseph Pond
You will always be biting off more than you can chew if you don't believe other people should consider your project worth their time. This is much more of a leadership point than a programming point. But seriously, work it out: is this idea something that you believe can happen even knowing that you are currently unprepared for many of the challenges that you are about to face? You've given us a rough outline. You'll be giving others a more thorough explanation, and it will soon become obvious that you've overlooked some stuff. Nobody can keep that from happening to you. Having said that, if you think that you have a good grasp of the requirements of most of the components and you believe you can thoroughly describe the requirements to others with appropriate skills, I'd say go for it.
P.S. -- If you have any mock-ups, that would make it seem like a sweet deal from a prospective developer's perspective. It sounds like the selling point is the extensibility of easily designing new courses. If that's so, give an idea of the basic structure of the Jython. When my supervisor gives me a task that I understand thoroughly, I'd rather he didn't show me how to get started or what design or implementation to use. When I have no idea what he's talking about, the roughest of sketches gives me days of a head start.
Are you also the only analyst, translator, technical writer, and tester? This sounds like a large undertaking for one person. Do you have a deadline? In my opinion you will need at least another developer and tester. Even more if you have tight deadlines.
Just find the right person who really agrees with your idea and will take the ownership.
I had been involved in several projects but I dropped out some and only worked on the one I really interested in. So, look at it in the reverse side, looking for a contributor is not easy and must find the person has the things I mentioned about. Then, you can talk about keep contact,, system... project manage..etc. If you can't find the right person, even you have a good system, you are just wasting your time and going nowhere.
Okay, a couple things. First, it's better never to do a big project. Do lots of small projects instead. If it works out that what you get at the end is a big thing, that's good.
Second, a lot of times what works best for this of thing is to think about how you can make something to make it all easier. in this case, you have two issues: making something that does the various operations needed to display and give feedback (I'm working through a Rosetta Stone course myself, they're pretty cool.)
You're really thinking about a course authoring system; you can't write all the materials for all the languages, so you have to make it easy to do the authoring.
This sounds like a job for a DSL, a domain specific language.
And it sounds like a really cool idea.
This is a broad question, so let me narrow it a bit. I am a graphic designer entering the world of web design. I'm not totally green in this field, but I know enough to know that I have a lot to learn. From friends and from posts on this site I realize there is often a harmful disconnect between design and development.
I'm getting ready to place a client log-in/password "portal" on my website. Nothing fancy, just enough to provide some sound mind for my clients and a space for secure download of imagery. I am only handling the look and feel of this one, nothing more. What potential pitfalls should I know about, on my end, to avoid making the development end hairy?
And of course any other nuggets of wisdom are appreciated too. Thanks!
Perhaps the worst mistake that many designers make when working with developers is to assume that developers aren't creative, and that we couldn't possibly have any good ideas or inputs into the design. The fallacy of this is obvious because what we do all day, every day, is create things. It's taken for granted that designers can raise bugs against developers when our code doesn't represent the design exactly, yet many designers get very touchy when we raise suggestions about how their design could be improved even in minor ways. Sometimes the suggestions may not be suitable, but occasionally you might be able to improve your design.
In addition, I have frequently found that designers under-estimate the capabilities of developers to achieve what they want, so will sometimes suggest a simpler alternative. By opening up the dialog and giving a couple of options like a minimum one and an ideal one, you might be surprised that you can have elements of the ideal one, or all of it, or even something better as you discuss what actually can be achieved (sometimes what seems hard to achieve to a designer seems easy to the dev, and vice versa, because they are different disciplines). Of course the converse is true and you might be aiming too high, so you need to find that out as well.
In summary - you're absolutely right that any disconnect between design and dev is detrimental both to morale and the final product. So talk to the devs as soon as you have initial designs, and keep a good two-way dialog open.
I am a web developer, so I'm answering this from my viewpoint. There is really no serious pitfall as long as developer and designer understand each other. One tries to make websites look as attractive as possible, while the other tries to make the look of the website as close to the design as possible.
So when I'm asked to do the impossible, (like replacing the browser's default scrollbar with an animated image of a cat) I'll just tell the designer that it can't be done, the reasons for that, and suggest possible alternatives (Flash ?). After that being said, I expect the designer to understand and cooperate with me to choose the best alternative, not suddenly turning into grumpy mode or something.
A little basic knowledge of the developer's work would help, too.
Some ideas that may smooth the process :
Talk to the developers directly and ask if they have any specific requirements. Different platforms have different needs and requirements. Communication is important.
Get the basics of good HTML and CSS down. There are many references but you can try A List Apart as a starting point.